About Me

Rachel is a post-bacc research scientist at Columbia University's Formal Methods & Reasoning Group (FoRG), formerly the Barnard Programming Languages Lab. Recently graduating from Columbia University with a bachelor’s degree in cognitive science, she brings an empirically grounded rigor from behavioral and biological sciences to causal reasoning, neurosymbolic AI, and formal methods. Drawing from experience in neuroepidemiology at the Columbia Medical Center, past research at the University of Cambridge, and co-authored work published in Nature Human Behavior, this foundation now translates to her current research, where an understanding of flexible human cognition drives principled design choices in neurosymbolic architectures and benchmark design. She began working with Professor Mark Santolucito for her undergraduate senior thesis in September 2025, with her research on human causal reasoning as finite-state dynamics earning the academic prizes for “Distinction in Senior Thesis” and "Interdisciplinary Distinction for Exceptional Research Incorporating Methods from Multiple Disciplines” from the Cognitive Science department. She is continuing this line of inquiry working for Professor Santolucito, speaking about her work at frontier AI companies, and presenting her research at international conferences.